Saturday, December 05, 2009

Mosques as barracks, minarets as bayonets...

Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was being faithful to his creed when he declared, “Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.” Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a fascist Sunni imam with a huge following among those who subscribe to the Muslim Brotherhood’s antediluvian worldview, was more to the point when he thundered at an event organised by London’s then Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, “The West may have the atom bomb, we have the human bomb.” Sheikh Qaradawi, who is of Egyptian origin, frequently exhorts Muslims not to rest till they have “conquered Christian Rome” and believes “throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler”. Islamic schools in Britain funded by Saudi Arabia use textbooks describing Jews as “apes” and Christians as “pigs”. Theo Van Gogh, who along with writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali produced Submission, a film on the plight of Muslim women under sharia’h, was shot dead by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, in Amsterdam. Rallies by radical Islamists, which were once rare, are now a common feature in European capitals with banners and placards denouncing democracy as the ‘problem’ and Islam as the ‘solution’.

Such crude though accurate assertions of Islamism, coupled with the relentless jihad being waged overtly — exemplified by the London Underground bombings and the riots in Parisian suburbs — and covertly as exposed by Channel 4’s stunning investigation in its Dispatches programme titled ‘Undercover Mosque’, have now begun to raise hackles in Europe. The first signs of an incipient backlash came in the form of French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanding a ban on the burqa (the sharia’h-imposed hijab is already banned at public schools in France). Any doubts that may have lingered about Europe’s patience with Islam’s rage boys running thin have been removed by last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland where people have voted overwhelmingly to ban the construction of minarets which are no longer seen to be representing faith. For 57.5 per cent of Swiss citizens, the minaret, an obligatory adjunct to a mosque which is used by the muezzin to call the faithful to prayers five times a day, is now a “political symbol against integration”. They view each new minaret as marking the transmogrification of Christian Europe into Islamic Eurabia. The Islamic minaret, according to Swiss People’s Party legislator Ulrich Schluer, has come to represent the “effort to establish sharia’h on European soil”. Hence the counter-effort to ban their construction.

Last Sunday’s referendum and the massive vote against Islamic minarets is by no means an unexpected development, as is being pretended by Islamists and those who find it fashionable to defend Islamism or are scared of taking a stand lest they be accused of Islamophobia, which Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, describes as a “standing fatwa” against Islam’s critics. Resentment against assertive political Islam has been building up in Switzerland for almost a decade, triggered by refugees from Yugoslavia’s many civil wars seeking to irreversibly change the Swiss way of life to suit their twisted notions of Islam’s supremacy. For the past many years the Swiss People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, both avowedly right-of-centre organisations, have been trying to initiate an amendment to Article 72 of Switzerland’s Constitution to include the sentence, “The building of minarets is prohibited.” After doing the cantonal rounds, both the parties set up a joint Egerkinger Committee in 2007 to take their campaign to the federal level. The November 29 referendum is the outcome of that campaign.

The resultant vote — 57.5 per cent endorsing the proposed amendment to the Constitution with 42.5 opposing it — provides some interesting insights. For instance, the Swiss Government and Parliament, which are opposed to the amendment, clearly suffer from a disconnect with the Swiss masses. The voting pattern also shows that the spurious ‘cosmopolitan spirit’ of Zurich, Geneva and Basel, where people voted against the ban by a narrow margin, is not shared by most Swiss. The initiative has got 19.5 of the 23 cantonal votes — Basel city Canton, with half-a-vote and the largest Muslim population in Switzerland, barely defeated the initiative with 51.61 per cent people voting against it. This only goes to show that the Left-liberal intelligentsia may dominate television studio debates, as is often seen in our country, but it neither influences public opinion nor persuades those whose perception of the reality is not cluttered by bogus ‘tolerance’ of the intolerant.

Daniel Pipes, who is among the few scholars of Islam not scared to be labelled an ‘Islamophobe’, is of the view that the Swiss vote “represents a turning point for European Islam, one comparable to the Rushdie affair of 1989. That a large majority of Swiss who voted on Sunday explicitly expressed anti-Islamic sentiments potentially legitimates such sentiments across Europe and opens the way for others to follow suit”. As always, Pipes is prescient. An opinion poll conducted by the French Institute for Public Opinion after the Swiss referendum shows 46 per cent of French citizens are in favour of banning the construction of minarets, 40 per cent support the idea, while 14 per cent are indecisive. “That it was the usually quiet, low profile, un-newsworthy, politically boring, neutral Swiss who suddenly roared their fears about Islam only enhances their vote’s impact,” says Pipes. The post-referendum opinion poll in France shows that one in two French citizens would not only like to see minarets banned, but along with them mosques, too.

The ‘sudden roar’ heard in Switzerland has found a resonance in countries apart from France. A comment on the Swiss vote that appeared in the mass circulation German newspaper Bild reflects the popular mood in Germany which is remarkably similar to that which prevails in Switzerland at the moment: “The minaret isn’t just the symbol of a religion but of a totally different culture. Large parts of the Islamic world don’t share our basic European values: The legacy of the Enlightenment, the equality of man and woman, the separation of church and state, a justice system independent of the Bible or the Quran and the refusal to impose one's own beliefs on others with ‘fire and the sword’. Another factor is likely to have influenced the Swiss vote: Nowhere is life made harder for Christians than in Islamic countries. Those who are intolerant themselves cannot expect unlimited tolerance from others.”

Yet, it may be too early to suggest that the tide of Islamism will now have to contend with the fury of a backlash. Governments and organisations that find merit in toeing the line of least resistance have reacted harshly to the Swiss vote; rather than try and understand why more and more people are beginning to loathe, if not hate, Islamism, a case is being made all over again for the need to be tolerant with those whose sole desire is to subjugate the world to Islam. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay, who is yet to utter a word about the suppression of freedom and denial of dignity in Islamic countries or the shocking violation of human rights by jihadis, has been scathing in her response, describing the Swiss vote as “a discriminatory, deeply divisive and thoroughly unfortunate step”. The Organisation of Islamic Conference has warned that the vote will “serve to spread hatred and intolerance towards Muslims”. The OIC’s complaint would carry credibility if it were to demand tolerance towards non-Muslims in its member-countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and denounce Islam’s preachers of hate. That, however, is unlikely to happen. On the contrary, the OIC will continue to defend, even while accusing others of intolerance and hate, the denial of religious, social and cultural plurality in Islamic countries as also the repudiation of the core values of a modern democracy by those Muslims who find themselves living in one. The absence of ‘multiculturalism’, which Muslims demand in non-Islamic countries, is one of the defining features of any Islamic country, including those touted as being ‘moderate’ and ‘modern’, for example, Egypt and Turkey.

It is amusing that Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, whose salary and perquisites are paid for by the Government, should feel upset over the Swiss vote: “This proposal ... is not considered just an attack on freedom of beliefs, but also an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside Switzerland.” In his own country, Coptic Christians live in increasing fear of Muslim attacks with anti-Copt violence fast becoming a regular feature. No less amusing is Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s response to the Swiss rejection of Islamic minarets. Mr Davutoglu finds the proposed ban on the construction of minarets “reminiscent of the sectarian wars of the Middle Ages” and has warned that the move could “incite clashes on a global scale if sufficient measures are not taken”. Had he been honest, Mr Davutoglu would have added that the posters exhorting Swiss citizens to vote for the proposed ban were inspired by his leader’s vivid description of Islamic minarets as Islam’s bayonets.

Hence, those who are crying foul over the Swiss vote and those who are pretending disquiet and anguish are perfectly at ease when Saudi Arabia ruthlessly deals with the faintest expression of faith in any religion other than Islam or Malaysia pulls down Hindu temples. Nor have Ms Pillay and those who blithely cite her criticism of the Swiss referendum to absurdly insist that the vote “represents a fundamental threat to millions of Muslims” ever bothered to protest against the discrimination meted out to Copts in Egypt or the raucous, coarse anti-Semitism of Iran whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad misses no opportunity to reiterate his threat of “wiping Israel off the map of the world”. Closer home, Muslims are not known to have disowned those of their co-religionists whose murderous campaign to cleanse Kashmir Valley of all Hindus resulted in 250,000 Pandits fleeing their ancestral land and being reduced to refugees in their own country. Nor were anguished voices heard when Muslims took to the streets to prevent the construction of temporary shelters along the Amarnath Yatra route for Hindu pilgrims, although Muslims in India and abroad would see any move to curtail facilities and subsidies for Haj pilgrims, which are paid for by non-Muslims, as a “fundamental threat” and a manifestation of Islamophobia. We are yet to be told by Muslims who demand equal rights and more in non-Islamic countries – for instance, public funds for schools in Britain where children are taught Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s hate agenda and madarsas in India which excel in bigotry -- what they have to say about Hindus being asked to pay jizya to Islamist thugs in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or the abduction and rape of Hindu women under the Jamaat-e-Islami’s supervision in Bangladesh. What we have heard, most recently in India, are exhortations for Muslims to stand apart from the national mainstream, to maintain their separate Islamic identity, to banish women from public places and to reject all secular statutes.

Instead of indulging in manufactured rage and pretending imagined victimhood, Muslims across the world would do well to ponder over Bild’s pithy comment: “Those who are intolerant themselves cannot expect unlimited tolerance from others.” As for the limp-wristed Left-liberal intelligentsia, it is welcome to be tolerant of Islamic intolerance, but it should not expect the vast majority to meekly subjugate itself to Islam – if that is Islamophobia, so be it. The time to feign tolerance so as to be seen as ‘secular’ is over. The age of dhimmitude is drawing to a close. That is the real significance of the Swiss vote.

(This is an expanded version of my Sunday column 'Coffee Break' which appears in The Pioneer.)

28 comments:

great article indeed.. but then i want to make a different point.. which is going to have an impact on indians... not just muslims... but indians on a whole..your phrase "manufactured rage" made me think.. yes... but then... there can be an opposite effect as well... what about some group (ultra extremists are everywhere..!! ) starts claiming vicory .. (a sort of "manufactured vicory" as they haven't done anything to win anything) and try to capture people's imagination and inflame peoples for political and their personal browny points... then the whole india will suffer...

hence it is better to condemn it.. (atleast in words... though not in any action like international ban etc.)so that we can stop the impact at 2000 km away from us indians.. rather than invite the problem home..

Don't think Vishnu will reply here or on twitter to Kanchan. Those who r expecting a reply actually don't know the hatred these left-libs garner for anybody whom they disagree with. Such is their hatred that they won't say truth lest they label as Right-winger.

The problem with so called liberals is that they are more intolerant than those they accuse of intolerance. And, in India, they say what they do not because of any profound understanding gained by study and analysis but because they have programmed themselves to oppose any view that looks even faintly similar to that of the Hindu Right, the real villain for them.

The shrill opposition to the Swiss ban in sections of the media is simply to pre-empt even a remotely similar call influencing the educated here. Because that will translate into more votes going the "Right" way. The turf of the Congress has to be protected at all costs. Even at the cost of the nation.

Any one tell me one place where these Muslims are living harmoniously with the nature & surrounding & fellow citizens ! Perhaps Gujrath is an approximation of sort to this idea of Muslims are nothing but like any one else :|

Added to this these secular worms are adding fuel to fire by inventing reasons to upset the already imbalanced minds of Muslims

I look at the Swiss vote as the first salvo against Eurabia and the European elite, who pretend to be blind. This vote gives is a shot in the arm for the rightists else were in Europe. Italian rightwingers are mulling a similar vote. Italy can hold a direct referredums like the Swiss.

German Chanceller Angela Merkel acknowledged the fear of citizens overwhelmed by a 'foreign culture' unable or unwilling to assimilate.

This bastard Kanchan Gupta born to several bitches does nothing useful except traducing Islam! Society does not need an "obnoxious little weed" like Kanchan. I fervently pray to God that he must die the most tragic and miserable death! Some mullah should pump a magazine of bullets into him! Wonder why I shouldn't become a Kasab myself?

You proved that you are an asshole with your comments. I suspect you are a Mullah pretending to be Sivaraman. If you have the guts, do it yourself ratherthan asking another Mulla to shoot Kanchan. But, afterwards don't cry that people like you were killed p remember Godhra? Hindus have stopped taking shit from you.

Algerian president Houari Boumedienne said in 1974: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory."

Sivaraman this is a warning from ethical Indian hacking group HMG and Andhra hacker to you: Stop spamming and abusing nationalist Indians or else we will track down your IP, install thousands of Trojans, worms on your PC, hack-crack all your mail passwords, financial details, important documents and format your hard disk. Worse we will make your system "unusable". Don't take our warning lightly. Our reputation speaks for itself. If you don't trust me go and ask your brother Porkies who are getting fucked up physically by Mullahs and online by us.

Dear Kanchan,In a recent debate about the ‘Minarets’ issue on NDTV, anchor Nidhi Razdan very softly, almost apologetically (probabely afraid of a fatwa) asks, 'some people say that in countries like Saudi Arabia' non-Muslims don't have any religious freedom and Hindus are not allowed to build temples. So what do you have to say about that?” Mani Shankar Aiyer quickly retorted that Saudi Arabia has always said they are a Muslim Country. There are 2 million Indians working there, many of who is Hindu. So we can't complain. Is that the end of the story? UK is a Christian country but there is decency here towards other beliefs. I have worked in Saudi Arabia and have seen with my eyes how Bibles and other religious books are simply chucked down to the floor and kicked around by the staff. No religion, apart from Islam, is allowed to on Saudi soil. My Christian colleagues were harassed once by the police and mutawas for holding a prayer meeting in the privacy of their home. A neighbour may have complained. I have also witnessed many Hindus converting to Islam because of the absence of any religious outlet and probably a kind of inferiority complex. How would the Muslims feel if no mosques were allowed in India and their holy books were licked about at airport customs?Compared to Saudi Arabia Europe is still ‘Jannat’ for Muslims. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis spend many lakhs to enter the UK and European countries. But these same migrants regret the historic defeat of Muslim Rule in Spain in the middle-ages by Christian armies. Many still aspire to convert Europe into an Islamic land. I have heard this faith in their religion being expressed by many educated Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK, who I have worked with and known well enough. Manik1977Loyola, UK

I think there is a valid criminal case against Sivaraman. If HMG can track him, he should be arrested for saying that he will act like Kasab (now we know who is his hero) and will probably kill Kanchanda.

Nice to see so many people coming out in support of the article. Except some Sivaraman who he is not.

After keying in our feelings from the comfort of our homes can we now go out and vote for the right party next time which will take care of Hindu interests in India rather than masturbate on someone else's cerebral output.

I , a hindu, am not aspiring a bit to see a single Hindu Temple in Saudi or Dubai. It is within India that I find protracted looting of our Temples coupled with egregious lording over their management by the gorement of india and an equally apathetic unethical law courts. All of them overwhelmingly HINDUS. You can come up with adjectives like secularised , uninformed , impoverished , powerless for aam janata. That is no excuse. It is we the people who are guilty for our plight. We so supinely tolerate them by rereelecting the same thugs.

Why? Because we don't really care. We have a plethora of godmen called Puttaparthi babas to Ammachis & Jaggi Vasudevs who exclusively focus on embellishing their own empires & pampered haloes. We idiotised hindus lack solidarity.

It is understandable you don’t aspire to see any temples in Saudi Arabia- you don’t stay there nor maybe you ever will. But the Hindus who live and work there would love to have a temple there to go to probably once in a year. Maybe they would go there wearing new white clothes, after shaving their head, do some kind of sacrifice, circumambulate the temple seven times like they have normally done here in India for a few millenia. They may even abstain from non-veg food and sex during the pilgrimage. They may even kiss and touch reverently a black stone deity near the structure. Stranger than fiction, all this is done by the Muslims in Makkah during Hajj including touching and kissing the Black stone at Kabah.I also believe that if I am treated badly by someone when I am visiting his home I cannot be expected to treat him with respect when he is in my home. Elaborating this a bit more, if I am not allowed to sit in his house, I may not allow him to sit in mine; if I am not offered any tea, I may not offer him any tea in mine; if I am not allowed to pray I may not allow him to pray in my house; etc. We must make it absolutely clear to the sheiks that their injustice towards the thousands of years old faith of a billion Indians will not be tolerated. I bet if the Muslim countries allowed full religious freedom to the Christians by allowing them to build Churches and even convert people to their faith then Switzerland or any other Christian country would be more than happy to reciprocate. But people do not want to tolerate injustice for another day. The Muslims must know that if they want respect they must learn to give respect too, internationally.

"Mosques as barracks" - we all know that it has been the reality in India. India is fast becoming an islamic state. Is anybody making the public aware of the impending danger? India is no Euorope, so forget about any resistance to the Islamo Fascism. Remember, this time there will be no sword if Islam to convert the masses, but it will be the bills passed by the govt. to enforce the rules, laws and stipulations that will make Islamization of India easier and smoother. Do the Indians realize who their current ruler is?

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